


I Would Be a Mermaid Fair

by storieswelove



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: F/F, Little Mermaid AU but only sort of, also she eats people, but one mermaid is superior to no mermaids, despite the tags this is actually a romance, ft. Stevie learning how to love, mermaids y'all, well a single mermaid, with a special bonus — many many teeth, yes teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26448712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/pseuds/storieswelove
Summary: When Stevie was young, she betrayed the Sea.She left.She danced on knives, cut out her tongue, dissolved into foam, all in the name of love for a man.A man who never, not once, worried for her.But the Sea, ever patient and ever wise, did not revel in the vindication she rightly deserved after her own daughter betrayed her. When she turned back again to be carried away into death, the Sea had gentled Stevie’s heavy heart.The Sea had welcomed her home.Sowly, bit by bit, in the Sea she was reborn.And so, Stevie dedicated her life in service to the one who loved her in return.Once, she chased after men. Now, she chased men to their doom.
Relationships: Stevie Budd/Twyla Sands
Comments: 42
Kudos: 32
Collections: Elevate! A Schitt's Creek Femslash Exchange





	I Would Be a Mermaid Fair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/gifts).



> whetherwoman: Stevie took a huge detour from where I originally planned, but I hope this keeps in the spirit of what you asked for. 
> 
> Title from Tennyson's "[The Mermaid](http://vqa.dickinson.edu/poem/mermaid)," a weird and lovely poem.
> 
> Inspiration goes to a friend (who knows who they are), who was the first person to tell me how gay _The Little Mermaid_ was. If this is news to you too, [here's](https://lithub.com/dear-internet-the-little-mermaid-also-happens-to-be-queer-allegory/) some delightful light reading for your day.

**I would be a mermaid fair;**

**I would sing to myself the whole of the day;**

**With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;**

**And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,**

**'Who is it loves me? who loves not me?'**

**\- Tennyson**

**I.**

_When Stevie was young, she betrayed the Sea._

_She left._

_She danced on knives, cut out her tongue, dissolved into foam, all in the name of love for a man._

_A man who never, not once, worried for her._

_But the Sea, ever patient and ever wise, did not revel in the vindication so rightly deserved after a daughter’s betrayal. Instead, when Stevie returned to the Sea to be carried away into death, the Sea gentled Stevie’s heavy heart._

_The Sea welcomed her home._

_Slowly_ _, bit by bit, in the Sea she was reborn._

_And so, Stevie dedicated her life in service to the one who loved her in return._

_Once, she chased after men. Now, she chased men to their doom._

*

“Hey, sailor,” she says, batting her lashes. Stevie is splayed out on a jagged rock in an outcropping when she catches his eye. A soldier, by the looks of him. It was probably her singing that drew him near. It usually is. She has a lovely voice. 

He grins at her across the wet sand with a self-satisfied smile — they all smile that self-satisfied smile. 

“Well, hey there, beautiful,” he says, moving toward her with the swagger of a king, not a feral, good-for-nothing sailor. She can smell the blood on him even from a distance — blood he has spilled, and blood he will spill. She has dedicated her life to _this_ for years and still it makes her ache, to think of the harm they have done, the harm they will do. “How’d you know I was looking for you? I heard the most _beautiful_ singing and I just knew there had to be a beautiful face attached to it.” 

Stevie bats her lashes again as his own smile grows more predatory with every step toward her, like an animal who has cornered its dinner. 

Because that’s what it always is with men like this, isn’t it? The chase. The hunt. Like a lion tracking its prey. 

But these men are fools. In the depths of the Sea, the smartest animals don’t stalk and sprint. They camouflage. They disguise. They wait. 

Stevie pouts her lips and lowers her eyes and flashes her sweetest smile, splashing her tail on the surface of the water innocently while she just sits. And waits. 

They always come. Fools. 

“What’s your name?” he asks, smug as a cat. She misses cats. They don’t come near her much anymore. Occupational hazard.

“Oh, it’s a secret,” she says in that voice she spent a lifetime perfecting, to draw men in and keep them near. If only she’d known then how she’d _really_ put it to good use. “Why don’t you come a little closer and I’ll tell you?”

The trick, Stevie has learned, is never smiling _too_ wide. That sometimes scares them off. Men only _think_ they want her to smile, just glimpses of pieces of her. Batting eyelashes, splashing tails, ethereal voice, pretty smile. There’s never any interest in the real thing, the whole thing.

Men don’t think twice about objectifying her. 

But Stevie spent half her life devoted to collecting broken objects and calling them treasure. They’ll never beat the grand-master at her own game.

The sailor leans in close, and she can smell the stench of death on him. They always reek of death in the final seconds. She still wonders if it's their own impending death, fresh and raw and right on the precipice of _now_. 

With their deaths comes bloodshed, of course. But men, when left to their own devices, use the Sea to wage their wars and settle their debt, emptying into her torrents of blood and bodies, and never, not once, with a thanks. 

So, what was the death of this man, of ten men, of one hundred men, of one thousand men against the downpour of blood right into the heart of the Sea, leaving her alone to carry the sorrow and grief, growing ever saltier as she shed tears for thousands of men whose lives she had not asked for? 

Stevie cannot stop wars, but she can stop the men who would wage them. 

The last thing the sailor sees is her giant, gaping maw as she closes her jaw and pierces him with her razor sharp teeth. 

*

A mangy dog makes its way over to Stevie as she picks a bit of skin from her teeth. She throws the pup a leftover bone, and watches as he runs off with it. 

The dogs always come for bones, but they never stay. 

David — that’s what she’d named the pelican who insisted on perching on her rock — comes to visit sometimes, but it’s not the same. 

She misses cats. 

*

This life is not so lonely. Stevie has always preferred solitude. Or, at least, she would rather be here, by herself, than engaging in meaningless conversation with people she doesn’t care about.

Her sister, Alexis, used to call it “me time.” Her sister was crap at being alone then. 

She’s never _really_ alone, anyway. The Sea is always around her with a warm embrace.

And on the rare days she is crushed by the unbearable weight of loneliness? The days the sound of the waves colliding against rocks, the shrieks of the gulls, the rumble of thunder, the everpresent smell of salt all serve to make her feel like an island of one, instead of a part of an intricate story being sung by the Sea? Well, that's just her penance. 

Some people are destined to be lonely.

She’ll learn to be okay with it. 

**II.**

_Not all ships carry ill-will and violence in their bellies. Some ships — merchants, occasionally pirates, mostly fishermen — are just trying to survive._

_The Sea understands. Stevie understands. The Earth is loving, but she is fickle. It is not easy to survive her whims._

_Stevie allows those ships safe passage._

*

The woman walking toward Stevie is beautiful. The woman walking toward Stevie is a pirate. 

There aren’t many women who are pirates. One or two per ship, sometimes. The men don’t always know, but Steve can _always_ tell. They find their freedom — from their families, from their suitors, from their darkest secrets — on the open seas. 

The Woman smiles from afar. She has no thirst for blood. Stevie would smell it. She is harmless to the Sea. 

Harmless to Stevie, however? That’s another story. 

“Oh, hi! Are you a mermaid?” she asks, toothy grin splitting open her face. She’s dressed in trousers and an open shirt. Her hair is braided back and she has a single gold earring. She’s breathtaking. 

But Stevie will not give up her voice and her tail and her life and her blood and her _soul_ for a pretty face that will not give her anything in return. Not again. She steels herself. 

The pirate sidles up and crouches down on the ground, bringing her face level with the mermaid. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve never met a mermaid before!” 

Stevie is tongue-tied by the Woman’s beauty, voiceless once again. She is her own undoing. All she can do is smile.

Too widely, she realizes too late, as she flashes her pearly whites, each and every one like a knife blade, incompatible with pretty girls with sweet voices and love from another, with anything but fear and blood and soul-sucking loneliness. 

She presses her lips closed, but not before the Woman’s eyes go wide and bright, like two dried-up sand dollars side by side on the shore. 

Well, that’s that.

Good riddance. 

*

“You know, all those teeth, they’re just amazing,” Twyla — the Woman’s name is Twyla— says, an hour later. She hasn’t stopped talking. Stevie has barely said a word. All Stevie can do is smile and nod and _giggle_. “I have an uncle — my father’s brother — who was born with an extra set of teeth. My family always said it was a mark of the devil, but I’m not so sure — I thought it must be a sign from one of the gods.” Twyla smiles, perfectly flat teeth sparkling as they catch the sunlight. 

Stevie is _fucked_. 

*

But Twyla comes back again and again. She works in the galley kitchen of a “merchant ship,” whose flag becomes a Jolly Roger the instant it reaches open water. In all her years as part of the crew, the men have never learned her secret. 

“Is that what you did back home?” Stevie asks, wondering not just about cooking skills, but about where home was, about abandoned husbands, or waiting lovers. The question slips out unbidden; hope is an ugly look on Stevie.

“Oh, no, I _wish_. My mother made jewelry, so I learned when I was young. We sold it at a market stall in town. I’m great with my hands.” Twyla blushes. So does Stevie. “What about you? Do you have any family?” It’s a pointed change of topic and Stevie grabs for it readily. 

“Thirteen sisters and my father,” Stevie says. “But I haven’t seen them in years. We didn’t...get along.” Her family was pretty scaggy. 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I understand. I don’t have any siblings but, I have a lot of cousins. And uncles and aunts. A lot of people who did a lot of bad things. It’s hard. Do you miss them?” 

The question catches Stevie off guard. She hadn’t considered whether she was _allowed_ to miss them. “I’m not sure,” she answers honestly. 

Twyla nods in understanding. 

**III.**

_The humans call it falling in love. But in the Sea, there is no falling. In the sea, when you lose yourself._

_You float_

_You drift_

_Carried away on a wave, is more like it_

_Or a rip tide, in Stevie’s case._

_But she will not let herself be swept away this time._

_She gave up the land. It was not for her. It’s difficult to stay grounded as a child of the Sea._

_She thinks about the Woman._

_She yearns._

*

But Twyla comes back. Day after day when she’s docked. Month after month in between. 

“You know, my last tarot read, I drew the Two of Cups, and Death. Pretty scary stuff for a sailor,” Twyla says one day as she’s sitting behind Stevie on the rock, braiding Stevie’s long, black hair. “Meeting a mermaid and falling in love was a much better option.” She says it so matter of factly that it takes Stevie’s brain a few seconds to catch up. But Twyla just says things like that, like it’s totally normal to tell someone you love them in passing while you’re combing through tangles in their hair with your soft, supple fingers, warmed by the sun and chilled by the frigid spray of the water below. 

“I love you too,” Stevie says, probably too quietly to hear over the sounds of the waves crashing against the jagged stones that are her perch. But Twyla’s hands still in her hair and Twyla’s arms snake their way around her shoulders, and Twyla’s lips press against the crown of her head and Stevie cries with relief. 

And so, bit by bit, Stevie learns to trust again. She weeps less in fear when Twyla leaves. She swims up to Twyla’s ship pulling into the harbor when Twyla arrives home. 

Stevie brings Twyla pretty shells and shiny pearls from the Sea. Twyla brings Stevie loose beads and broken shards of pottery from her travels. Twyla laughs at the way Stevie lights up at the gifts but she doesn’t mind. She’s always collected broken things.

She hopes she can hold onto them this time.

**IV.**

The fourth time Twyla waxes poetic about her dreams of owning a tavern, Stevie asks, “Why don’t you then?” 

“Well, money,” Twyla says, flicking the gold hoop in her ear, the extent of her wealth. It will pay for her funeral some day. It’s not worth the risk of dying penniless and getting stuck in the underworld because you couldn’t afford a proper burial, if you can avoid it. 

Stevie may not be able to hold Twyla in the night, nor cook for Twyla when she’s sick, nor soothe Twyla’s sun-blistered skin after too many days at sea. But money? That’s one problem Stevie _can_ solve. Stevie takes her love of bits and baubles and human trash, and puts to good use her years of foraging through shipwrecks. 

In the end, she brings Twyla enough barnacle-encrusted jewels that, together, they dream bigger. And so Twyla, buys land and logs and labor and slowly, bit by bit, their Inn is born.

Never, not once, do they look back. 

*

Nestled inside the tiny Schitt’s Cove is the Sand & Siren, a welcome stopping point to merchants, and sailors, and independent traders looking for a night off from the Sea. And if some guests, occasionally, go missing? Well, it’s never anyone who will be missed. 

At high tide, Stevie swims up the rocky shore behind the inn and sits on the garden wall with her lover. At low tide, Twyla slips and slides down the black, moss-covered rocks while Stevie waits down below in the shallow of a tide pool, just enough water to keep her fresh and happy. 

*

Stevie, who has only ever known fervor and apathy in equal measure, finds balance. She can swindle sailors and swim in the Sea and search for seashells, and she never has to choose. 

And in the evenings, while Twyla strings seashells and sand dollars onto wire, Stevie can sing and smile at a pretty girl who _loves_ her. 

All her life, Stevie searched for The One — a hobby, a man, a purpose. 

But Stevie is not broken bits of pottery and glass and smiles and melodious notes. 

Stevie is a daughter of the Sea. Like the ebb and flow of the tide, her wholeness lies in the ever changing swells and crests and crashing breaking waves of her story. 

*

_There is an inn by the Sea_

_On a thin strip of land_

_Where there lives a girl and her mermaid_

_And a mermaid and her girl_

_And they live, the rest of their mortal days, side by side by the Sea._

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my endless love and thanks to my beta, to whom I owe a mutual life debt.


End file.
